Hamas stops Gaza captive releases 'until further notice', citing Israeli violations

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US President Donald Trump said on Monday that if all the Israeli captives held in Gaza are not returned by Saturday at noon he would propose cancelling the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and letting "all hell break loose."

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump also said he might withhold aid to Jordan and Egypt if they don't take Palestinian refugees being relocated from Gaza.

Dozens of Palestinian families fled on Monday from the Nur Shams refugee camp in the north of the occupied West Bank, as Israel pushed on with a brutal military attack.

"We hear explosions and bombings as well as bulldozers. It's a tragedy. They are doing here what they did in Gaza," said Ahmed Ezza, a resident.

Ahmed Abu Zahra, another resident of the camp which is on the outskirts of Tulkarm, said he was forced to leave his home.

"The (Israeli) army came and we were forced to leave after they started destroying our homes".

Three Palestinians, including two women and a young man, were killed on Sunday in Nur Shams, the health ministry in the territory said.

One of the women was eight months pregnant.

In the streets of Nur Shams camp, under a light rain, residents were fleeing.

An AFP photographer saw dozens of families hastily leaving the camp, while bulldozers carried out large-scale demolitions amid gunfire and explosions.

According to Murad Alyan, from the camp's popular committee, "more than half of the 13,000 inhabitants have fled out of fear for their lives".

Since January 21, the Israeli military has been conducting a major attack in the "triangle" of Jenin, Tubas and Tulkarm, where half a million Palestinians live.

Israel claims it is targeting "terrorist infrastructure".

Jenin in particular is a stronghold of armed Palestinian militant groups.

Hamas said on Monday that the next Gaza captive exchange may still take place as scheduled under the truce deal with Israel, after the group's armed wing had announced an indefinite postponement.

The Palestinian militant group said that "Hamas has intentionally made this announcement five days before the scheduled prisoner handover, allowing mediators ample time to pressure the (Israeli) occupation towards fulfilling its obligations. The door remains open for the prisoner exchange batch to proceed as planned, once the occupation complies."

The Palestinian Authority announced on Monday it would end its system of payments to the families of those killed by Israel or held in Israeli prisons, including for attacks on Israelis, responding to a long-standing request from Washington.

"President Mahmoud Abbas... issued a decree to cancel articles in the laws and regulations related to the system of paying financial allocations to the families of prisoners, martyrs and the wounded," the official WAFA news agency reported. Israel has long denounced the system and the Netanyahu government has used it as a reason to freeze funds for the PA.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty discussed on Monday regional developments with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio during a meeting in Washington, the Egyptian foreign ministry said in a post on X.

Abdelatty travelled to Washington on Sunday for meetings with U.S. officials in the wake of widespread anger in the region due to US President Donald Trump's plan for Gaza that would envisage the displacement of its Palestinian residents.

International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan is the first person to be hit with economic and travel sanctions authorized by US President Donald Trump that target the war crimes tribunal over investigations of US citizens or US allies.

Khan, who is British, was named on Monday in an annex to an executive order signed by Trump last week. Reuters reported on Friday that Khan had been designated by Washington.

The sanctions, which repeat action Trump took during his first term, include freezing of US assets of those designated and barring them and their families from visiting the United States.

The ICC on Friday condemned the sanctions, pledging to stand by its staff and "continue providing justice and hope to millions of innocent victims of atrocities across the world, in all situations before it."

Court officials met in The Hague on Friday to discuss the implications of the sanctions.

(Reuters)

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has issued a decree revoking the payment system of "financial allowances for the families of Palestinian prisoners, martyrs and injured", the text of the decree published by the official gazette showed. 

(Reuters)

The United Nations on Monday urged Israel and Hamas to ensure humane treatment for all people they hold, saying recent images of emaciated individuals being released was "deeply distressing".

"Images of emaciated Israeli hostages and Palestinian detainees released as part of the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire agreement have been deeply distressing," UN Human Rights office spokesman Thameen Al-Kheetan said in a statement.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Monday the Hamas announcement that it will stop freeing hostages was a violation of the Gaza ceasefire deal and that he had ordered the military to be at the highest level of readiness in Gaza.

(Reuters)

Hamas' armed wing will delay the release of more Israeli captives planned for Saturday until further notice, according to a statement by the group's spokesperson on Telegram. 

(Reuters)

Gaza's Ministry of Health has said that in the last 24 hours, nineteen deceased bodies had arrived to hospitals, including 14 recovered, two who succumbed to wounds and three new casualties. Additionally, 15 wounded people also arrived at hospitals.

Since the beginning of Israel's war on Gaza 48,208 people have been killed and a further 111,655 have been wounded.

Former UK supreme court judge Lord Sumption has said that there was an "arguable case" that Israel's war on Gaza is genocide.

Speaking in an interview with The Guardian, Lord Sumption said that "I thought - and still think - that the conduct of Israel in Gaza is grossly disproportionate and there's at least an arguable case that it's genocidal." 

"One can't put it higher than that because genocide depends on intent. That's quite a difficult thing to establish but I read the provisional decision of the international court (of justice) and it seemed to me that they were saying that that was an arguable proposition.

"Given that the obligation of parties to the genocide convention is proactively to prevent it happening and not just to react after the event I thought that the authors of the letter - and I wasn't the draftsman - had got a point," he added.

Israel's opposition leader Yair Lapid says that he is against the forced expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza in response to a question about Trump's plan to forcibly displace Palestinians from the enclave.

He did however say that he does not believe the Trumps proposal would involve forced expulsion, and that if Palestinians wanted to leave Gaza they should be able to do so.

President Donald Trump said Palestinians would have no right of return to Gaza under his plan for the United States to take over the territory, in an interview excerpt released Monday.

"No, they wouldn't, because they're going to have much better housing," Trump told Fox News Channel's Bret Baier when asked if the Palestinians would have the right to return. "In other words, I'm talking about building a permanent place for them."

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan again rejected a US proposal to relocate Palestinians from Gaza and said Israel should pay for the damage it caused there and for reconstruction to begin.

"We do not consider the proposal to exile the Palestinians from the lands they have lived in for thousands of years as something to be taken seriously,” Erdogan said during a visit to Malaysia on Monday.

"No one has the power to force the Palestinian people to experience a second Nakba," he added, referring to the mass displacement of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

Israeli forces have detained 580 Palestinians from the occupied West Bank in January, according to Palestinian news agency Wafa. 

The report stated that most of those detained came from the city of Jenin and its adjacent refugee camp. Among the 580 were 17 women and 60 children.

An Israeli delegation that was in Doha at the weekend for talks on the next phase of the Gaza ceasefire is returning from the Qatari capital, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's spokesperson said on Monday, without giving details.

(Reuters)

Dozens of people gathered Monday outside a Jerusalem court to protest the arrest of two Palestinian booksellers in the city's east, occupied by Israel since 1967 and later annexed.

The protesters shouted slogans denouncing Israel as a "fascist state" and held placards accusing the country of "cowardice".

Mahmud and Ahmad Muna, who were arrested on Sunday, were to appear in the court for an arraignment.

Both work for the Educational Bookshop, a cultural institution in east Jerusalem.

"Jerusalem District police officers have arrested two residents of east Jerusalem suspected of selling books containing incitement and support for terrorism," police said in a statement.

During the operation, the police found books on "nationalist Palestinian themes", the statement said, adding police were asking the court for an extension of the booksellers' detention.

The Muna family's lawyer, Nasser Odeh, said "hundreds of books" had been seized on Sunday.

Sidra Ezrahi, an Israeli-American taking part in the demonstration, called the arrests "unbelievable".

"We've been coming to this bookshop not for years but for generations," the protester in her 80s said, adding the arrests were "exactly what fascist states are doing".

Clashes have erupted between Palestinian fighters and the Israeli forces, according to Al Jazeera, as the Israeli military continues its assault on the Nur Shams refugee camp near Tulkarm in the occupied West Bank.

The Israeli delegation to Qatar has returned to Israel ahead of a security cabinet meeting on phase two negotiations of the Gaza ceasefire, according to Israeli press. 

The Lebanese army has continued deploying to south Lebanon in line with a ceasefire deal between Israel and Lebanon.

The Lebanese army deployed to the towns of Rab Thalatheen, Taloussa and Bani Hayyan, following the withdrawa of the Israeli army, according to Lebanon's National News Agency.

The Israeli military has continued to destroy homes in the occupied West Bank, with the military destroying structures in Khalet al-Daba, Masafer Yatta, and evicting families.

I am surrounded by many armed soldiers and three large bulldozers. They have invaded the village of Khirbet al-Daba in Masafer Yatta, forcibly evicting families from their homes in this freezing cold. So far, three homes have been demolished, and the destruction is still ongoing. pic.twitter.com/Wg68Vny2I2

— Basel Adra (@basel_adra) February 10, 2025

According to Yehuda Shaul, co-founder of rights group Breaking the Silence, seven structures have been destroyed alongside solar panels, trees and terraces.

BREAKING: IDF is now in Khalet al-Daba, Firing Zone 918 (Masafer Yatta), carrying out demolitions. Until now, 7 structures (including homes and toilets), also solar panels, trees and terraces, have been destroyed.

The forcible transfer of Palestinians out of Area C continues. pic.twitter.com/aShq5tV96o

— Yehuda Shaul (@YehudaShaul) February 10, 2025

A Palestinian was killed by Israeli fire in the Shujaiya neighbourhood of Gaza City, according to Palestinian news agency Wafa. 

The Kremlin said on Monday it was waiting for more details on US president Donald Trump's plan to buy the Gaza Strip, an idea which has sparked condemnation from many countries.

Trump said on Sunday he was committed to buying and owning Gaza, but could allow sections of the war-ravaged land to be rebuilt by other states in the Middle East.

Asked whether Trump's plan was acceptable for Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov noted that 1.2 million people lived in Gaza.

"It's worth waiting for some details here if we're talking about a coherent plan of action. We are talking about almost 1.2 million Palestinians who live there, and this is probably the main issue," Peskov told a conference call.

"These are the people who were promised a two-state solution to the Middle East problem by the relevant Security Council resolutions, and so on and so forth. There are a lot of questions like that. We don't know the details yet, so we have to be patient," said Peskov

(Reuters)

Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian questioned on Monday the United States' sincerity in seeking negotiations with Tehran while imposing sanctions, a week after President Donald Trump reimposed "maximum pressure" on the Islamic Republic.

"If the US were sincere about negotiations, why did they sanction us?" Pezeshkian said on the 46th anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution, adding that it was Israel, not Iran, which was destabilising the Middle East region.

(Reuters)

Hamas' Gaza chief Khalil al-Hayya said on Monday that the plans of the West, the United States and US President Donald Trump for the Gaza Strip were "doomed."

"We will bring them down as we brought down the projects before them," he said during a commemoration of the 46th anniversary of the Iranian revolution in Tehran.

Trump said on Sunday he was committed to buying and owning Gaza, but could allow sections of the war-ravaged land to be rebuilt by other states in the Middle East.

(Reuters)

The UN's agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) has warned that hundreds of families in Gaza are "at the mercy of severe winter storms" which have been affected by winter storms in the enclave.

"Hundreds of families in Deir al-Balah and North Gaza have been affected, with hundreds of tents destroyed and several households displaced," UNRWA said in a post on X. 

The agency added that it "is delivering tents, tarps, blankets and other essential supplies to thousands across Gaza struggling with the harsh conditions."

People living in makeshift tents in #Gaza are at the mercy of severe winter storms.

Hundreds of families in Deir al-Balah and North Gaza have been affected, with hundreds of tents destroyed and several households displaced.

UNRWA is delivering tents, tarps, blankets and other… pic.twitter.com/YKsXn6OGyp

— UNRWA (@UNRWA) February 10, 2025